


Purge

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: character study fic I guess, or just word vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find him, where he wallows in his sorrow and struggles for his life. The broken angel. She has been sent here to find him, at the cost of numerous angels lives, to retrieve him and bring him back for reprogramming. What makes his life more important than the numbers that have fallen. What makes him special. He is cracked, he is broken. She would think it might be more useful simply to dispose of him. To let him fall. But he is more dangerous in the wind, and more valuable in their control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purge

Purgatory is filthy. The stain of it encroaches on her. 

They have already lost several since they came to this God forsaken place. Torn and hollowed out vessels left scattered from where they came, to be picked over by the vultures that inhabit here. Those who remain, they have let themselves be stained. Rather than expend the energy to maintain the cleanliness of their vessels, they have committed to keeping themselves whole and alive. Dirtied with blood and worse, the rest in her company are slowly sinking into the filth, being contaminated by it. 

Naomi refuses to be sullied by this place. 

Her suit is as pristine here as it had been in heaven and she will not tolerate for a speck of dirt to mar it. Because she is not like them. Like the rabid creatures here. She is an angel, and in a world gone mad where the only law is force, she refuses to relinquish the control that she has, she refuses to be anything but the disciplined angel that she is. 

They find him, where he wallows in his sorrow and struggles for his life. The broken angel. She has been sent here to find him, at the cost of numerous angels lives, to retrieve him and bring him back for reprogramming. What makes his life more important than the numbers that have fallen. What makes him special. He is cracked, he is broken. She would think it might be more useful simply to dispose of him. To let him fall. But he is more dangerous in the wind, and more valuable in their control. 

He is the one who denied God’s word, who upended the world and laughed at the plans the angels had for centuries, for eons. He played at God himself, and he laid waste. He slaughtered as he vied for power and they had thought that he had been taken down for good, but this one, he refused to die. He refused to follow orders, to do what he was supposed to do, he refused the natural order of things, refused death, he was like a cockroach. He was filthy. 

He startled when he saw them. Dropped to a lower stance and raised his arms to fight. Braced against the inevitable. Naomi strode into the small clearing between trees where he was wandering, aimless and hapless. She shone in this dirty place. The rest of the angels, only four left, they started to circle around him and fan out while Naomi approached him. 

She smiled at him. Disarming. 

“Castiel.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We have come to bring you home.”

“No.”

Her hands hung loosely at her sides, non threatening. “No? Castiel, we only want to help you.”

“I can’t go back.”

“We will take you back. We will protect you.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Naomi.”

“Why do you want me?”

“Because heaven has work for you Castiel. You should know, that there is always duty to attend.”

“But, who…”

Castiel shifted and glanced around, and Naomi might think he were nervous but she knew better, he was lethal, calculating. 

“Who is even in control.”

“I am.”

One of the other angels lunged at him, impatient. Naomi watched as Castiel spun, grappled, twisted the angel’s weapon in his own hand to turn the point to his chest and plunge it in. With a flash of Grace infused light another angel fell. The rest swarmed him. Naomi could see other monsters watching them, on the fringes of the clearing, scavengers waiting for the carrion to be left. 

Naomi swept in, slipping in between the motions of the others whose patterns she knew in battle, she slipped in and found her way behind Castiel while he spun and lashed out, moving with him until she could still and come to a stop with her blade pressed against his throat. At that, Castiel stopped as well. 

“You will come with us.” 

“I, I must pay my penance here.”

“Oh, Castiel, but I will punish you for your sins as well.”

Tightening a hand on his shoulder and pulling the blade hard against his neck, enough for the metal to part the soft flesh of his vessel by a crack, she felt the moment all the fighting tension seeped from Castiel and he was hers. 

Naomi brought him back to heaven. She brought him to her personal office. It wasn’t the first time that she had brought him there. And it probably wouldn’t be the last. Most angels that needed to be reprogrammed by her, they didn’t come back a second time. But this one. He was broken. Cracked. And the cracks, there were more than she could see, they ran deeper than she could fathom; they kept splitting open. 

All of heaven had cracked as he did. They were soldiers, their strength was in their solidarity. When Michael and Lucifer were cast together in to the pit, and destiny was in flames, when the angels turned on each other and fought for power, when Castiel rose and fell, there were too many factions, too many cracks from the friction. They split under pressure and spiraled through heaven like fractals, branching infinitesimally and faster than Naomi could track. Too many cracks. 

She would patch them. Find them where they split and seal them together. She would restore heaven through force. Because she believed in order, in discipline. Even if she had to drill it in to every single angel, she would. One at a time. 

Starting with this one. 

He was filthy. He was tainted by Purgatory, covered in dirt, his clothes stained and it was etched into the cracks of his vessels face. With a touch Naomi could cleansed him, make him as white and as pure as her office. But she wouldn’t do that. When she cast him back in to the fray, it would be best for him to appear as he last remembered himself. Gouging out memories was a delicate business. 

Now he stood out, among the white and glass and silver of her office, her refuge. 

He whined and he shifted as he cast his glance around like a fledgling about to be scolded and she cringed for his lack of composure. Broken thing. They had him strapped to the chair, and the others had left Naomi to her work. 

“Where are we?”

“My office.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Do you think I would tell you?”

“No.”

“Don’t worry Castiel. We have been here before. You will not remember.”

“Remember what?”

“I will fix you. Again. I’ll just have to be more thorough this time.” 

She picked up her instrument, the comforting hum of the drill familiar to her, but Castiel flinched. She held him in place with her force, and steadily, carefully, took the drill to his eye. Back, back, into his head, she knew the path well for she had been the one to find it. Taking her instrument out, she spied down the narrow channel where his Grace began to weep and she let a pulse of her own seep from her breath as she pushed in to his mind. 

All angels were a familiar landscape. Or at least, they were supposed to be. They were all cast from the same mold, crafted for a singular purpose. To serve and obey God’s word. Castiel, he was familiar and foreign at the same time, a thing broken and remade, a decrepit thing that had fallen in to decay. He was not as he was supposed to be. 

Naomi burned through his mind with her Grace, she swept into him and purged the memories that would warp his purpose, extracting everything that she could in order to break him down, cleanse him, wipe his slate clean. There was only so much she could take without breaking him irreparably. She could still recognize pitted places where she had pulled him apart before. 

The last time that Castiel had sat under her drill was when he questioned their actions in Egypt. Oh, he slaughtered the first borns with the rest of them, but he was reticent. A spooked animal. Naomi knew that it was best to nip these things in the bud. Apparently, she had not pruned his disobedience down enough. The cracks in him ran deeper than she thought possible, but she would find them where they rooted, she would be more thorough this time. 

He was dangerous for his flaws, yet as she tore into his mind she recognized just how invaluable he could be.


End file.
